Hey,
I'm having a problem reading from a device attached to my serial port.

I have a big application which uses a thread to read from the serial device and writes the data to a log file. The device is set to transmit data at 500Hz, which means that my thread receives data of 14 bytes every 2 miliseconds.
The baud rate is set to 115200 and actually everything is working pretty fine accept it takes too long.

I'm using a polling method, meaning I check if there are enough bytes in the buffer and I read them. After the device stops transmitting I read from the buffer until it's empty and the thread ends.
The problem with this is that I'm constantly polling the buffer which results in 100% CPU usage. Since we're talking about a thread which is a part of a much bigger application this CPU business is out of the question.

Thus, I'm forced to use the Sleep() function. And here the problem begins:

• without Sleep: After the device stops transmitting the thread empties the buffer almost immediately and the thread ends in a matter of seconds.

• with Sleep: After the device stops transmitting the thread takes from 5 minutes to 35 minutes to empty the buffer (depends on the transmission duration).

Minutes are not the timing I had in mind when I wrote this thread. I tried to change the thread priority but it didn't work. I also tried to use event driven programming but it's too slow for my thread.

I could really use your help, any suggestion would be welcomed.

Thank You,
Gadi